Where Dreams Are Born

Alki Lighthouse

Alki LighthouseAlki Point, West Seattle

First lit: 1868

Automated: 1970

47.5762 -122.4206

Alki, the Washington State motto, means “by-and-by” in Chinook, a local Native American language. In 1851 the first white settlers in the area landed at the present day location of the lighthouse. They named the settlement New York-Alki.

A few years later a young entrepreneur named Doc Maynard was made unwelcome there and moved on to found another settlement a few miles from the inhospitable point. It is one of the ironies of his life that in his last years, a near destitute Maynard lived very close to the lighthouse where New York-Alki had long since succumbed to Doc’s city, which he’d named Seattle.